


How to read a tome of Collected Poems

by lyryk (s_k)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Permanent curse, Supernatural Summergen Fic Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-08-17 07:08:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8134867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s_k/pseuds/lyryk
Summary: Based on the prompt One or both of the brothers are hit by a permanent curse. Set during Season 2.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to the lovely Marciaelena for beta-reading. The title is from [this poem](http://academyofamericanpoets.cmail20.com/t/y-l-dktjvl-jhlhktlitu-o/%E2%80%9D).

If hovering was what Dean had been most guilty of before Sam lost his sight, the word wasn't even close to describing what he became when he couldn't get to Sam in time to stop the witch’s curse from hitting his brother.

The witch — all long hair and glasses, like John Lennon in his India phase — smiled while Sam was still picking himself off the floor. It was only later that Sam realized he’d seen the smile somehow. Somehow, despite the blinding curse that made his vision swim with blackened clouds, like a cluster of demons entwined together, hiding the world from him.

He could sense Dean somewhere near him, anxiety for Sam and rage against the witch warring inside him, radiating toward Sam like heat. “I’m okay,” he rasped out. “Go get him.”

But Dean didn’t go. The witch, who’d been subjecting abusive men to nasty skin conditions and sexual impotence, got away and skipped town, presumably to cast his spells on unfortunate criminals elsewhere in the world.

 

—

 

Despite his insistence that he was okay — “I said I’m _fine_ , Dean, quit hovering” — Sam was very far from it.

At first he simply let Dean do everything for him, knowing that Dean needed to be doing something, even if it was only standing outside the bathroom door while Sam took a shower, ready to burst in and defend Sam from too much shampoo threatening to sting his eyes.

But as the days went by, the blackness in front of Sam’s eyes began to change.

At first it was little things. They were still in the same town—Leeds, Utah, population 820—because Dean refused to go back to hunting until Sam was better. One night, as their pizza delivery boy turned away from the door, a little burst of color penetrated the darkness in front of Sam’s eyes.

“Hey Dean,” Sam asked. “Was that guy wearing a red uniform?”

There was a moment of silence before Dean answered. Sam, thinking that his vision might be returning, expected Dean to say, “How did you know?” Instead, Dean said, “Uh, no, Sam. He wasn’t wearing a uniform.”

“So—what? He must’ve been wearing something. Life isn't a porn video, Dean.”

“Ha-fucking-ha,” Dean said, but Sam could tell from his tone that he was pleased that Sam had made a joke. “He was wearing jeans and a Coldplay t-shirt. Guess the pizza man has no taste, huh, Sammy?”

Sam let the terrible pun go. “Is the pizza box red, then?”

“No, it’s white. What’re you on about, Sam?”

“Nothing,” Sam said, and focused his attention on the food. The slice was warm and red in his hands, the image quivering in front of Sam’s eyes like a blob of paint slapped haphazardly against a canvas.

It was food, he realized after a couple more days. And not just any food, either: food looked red to him when he was really hungry and, oddly enough, when Dean was hungry even if Sam wasn’t. He watched Dean devour a greasy cheeseburger, filling in the visual details from memory as the blob-shaped thing hovered in the blackness in front of him. He pictured Dean in his gray Henley, knowing he was wearing it because he’d felt the brush of the fabric against his arm when they’d entered the diner. The vinyl seats they were sitting on would almost certainly be red, almost certainly have seen better days like all the diner road-stops they’d made throughout Sam’s life. (He could almost hear Dad outside then, honking impatiently while the boys gobbled down the last of their food.)

“You seeing something?” Dean asked, easily shattering Sam’s concentration.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Sam said, annoyed, and started to return to the task of painstakingly piecing his world together through memory.

Dean muttered something about Sam being a bitch, clearly still talking around his mouthful of burger. He slurped noisily at his soda.

“Yeah, well, only jerks don't mind their table manners,” Sam said easily. When Dean smiled in response, his outline glimmered to life in front of Sam, cloudy-white like milky water.

 

—

 

Ghosts, Sam discovered during their first hunt after he was hit by the curse, were blue, the color brightening to an almost violent purple when the ghost realized it was going to be destroyed.

Dean hadn’t wanted to hunt, but Sam had insisted on going back to work. It was Sam who’d shot the ghost, aiming the shotgun at the mass of blue-turning-purple that was attempting to sneak up on Dean as he flicked the lit match into the dug-up grave.

“You could’ve killed me,” Dean said later, although there was no real accusation in his voice. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, holding an ice-pack to his forehead. Sam knew because Dean’s outline was clear and glimmering in his line of vision, much stronger now than it had been when he’d first started seeing Dean.

“No, I—I knew where you were.”

“How?”

“I don’t—I just _knew_ , okay? Isn’t that good enough for you?” Sam knew he wasn’t being fair, but then it wasn’t every day that you lost your sight and began seeing weird things instead.

“That’s not fair,” Dean said, easily echoing Sam’s thoughts. “This isn’t about me not trusting you, Sam. This is about me knowing that I can count on you during a hunt. I told you before and I’m telling you now, man—if you’re not ready, we’re not doing this.”

“I saved your fucking life, Dean.”

“And all I wanna know is how. You’re looking at me right now, you know? Right at me. You couldn’t do that two days ago.”

“I can see colors.”

“Yeah?” Dean prompted.

“Only they aren’t… actual colors. It’s more like I can sense moods, maybe emotions, that are somehow transformed into colors.”

“Gimme a f’rinstance?” Dean asked, his voice a little strained, as though he was trying not to lose his patience with Sam.

“You—you’re white. Your shade changes depending on your mood, but it’s always basically white.”

“My color changes depending on my mood? What does that—are you saying you can read my thoughts?”

“No, it’s not that simple.” Sam pushed his hands back through his hair. It was getting too long again, and Dean hadn’t reminded him that he needed a haircut. It felt like another piece of familiarity was lost, a reminder of how drastically his life had changed.

A call from Bobby about a new case rescued him from having to explain further, at least for the time being.

 

—

 

Gradually, they found new rhythms to replace the old ones. Sam couldn’t explain to Dean in words how he could sense things, but his newfound sense was spectacularly useful when it came to hunting. He could identify demon-possessed people from a distance, so no tests were necessary. The same went for werewolves, vampires and pretty much any entity that could disguise itself—none could hide from Sam’s perception, which gave each creature a distinct signature that Sam could effortlessly identify.

There was just one thing that he didn’t tell Dean, which was that he hadn’t yet worked up the courage to look at himself in the mirror and identify his own colors.

He was at the library one day; for once, he was reading for pleasure and not for research. He’d become miraculously good at research too, given that he didn’t actually have to read words to absorb their meanings. It had taken him weeks to master the skill, to figure out that while he couldn’t read the words on the page in front of him, he could sense the meaning of each word just as easily as he could sense people’s moods and characters. Dean had taken to making jokes about Sam’s freakish speed-reading habits, and Sam couldn’t bring himself to mind. If they could joke about it, they could beat it.

Dean had dropped him off earlier (they still hadn’t explored the possibility of Sam driving the Impala again), his color grayish at the edges, and Sam knew he wanted sex and alcohol, not necessarily in that order.

He was deep into Dickinson’s _Collected Poems_ when he heard someone slide into the chair next to his, and fingers tapped on the page Sam was reading.

“Like the book?”

“Who—” Sam cut himself off. There was no one there that Sam could identify, and it didn’t make sense. Everything was made of colors, even inanimate objects.

“Aww, Winchester. I’m kinda hurt that you don’t remember me. After I gave you such a precious gift and everything.”

“The witch. From Leeds.”

“Got it in one, Haley Joel.”

Despite himself, Sam scoffed. “I don’t see dead people.” Except he did, in a way.

“I know everything you see. I’m the gifter, remember? I knew what was in the shiny package before you tore the wrapping off.”

“You call blinding me a gift?”

“You think you’re blind? Really, Sam?”

Sam had no answer to that. “I can’t see you,” he said instead. An instinct within him wondered if the witch was there to kill him, if he’d ever see (figuratively speaking, of course) Dean again.

There was a light touch on his wrist. Sam didn’t flinch away. “Go and look at yourself, Sam.” Sam heard the chair being pushed back as the man got up. “Oh, and just in case you were wondering, the name’s Gabe.”

 

—

 

“So it’s not all bad after all,” Dean said one night as they lay on the hood of the Impala, as though continuing a conversation that they’d never really started.

Dean’s color was still white, warm and flickering at the edges like the light from a fireplace, not cold as ice as it was at times when Sam couldn’t figure out what Dean was thinking. Dean was still more freaked out about Sam’s visions than Sam’s new abilities from the blinding curse, a fact that was somehow comforting, familiar.

Sam still hadn’t looked at himself, but he often wondered what he’d see: maybe the darkness of his supernatural powers shining through in colors he’d never be able to define.

“Definitely not all bad,” he said, clinking his bottle against Dean’s.

 

-end


End file.
